The Child Attachment Interview (CAI) course focuses on the administration and coding of child attachment interviews. In order to receive CAI accreditation, participants are required to complete the reliability test which includes the additional coding of 30 interviews (divided into 3 sets) provided by Yael Shmueli-Goetz. The reliability test is available at an additional cost of $490 if you book it together with the training. If you choose to do it at a later date the cost will be $565.

The CAI was conceived in an attempt to find a middle ground between indirect, projective assessments of representations such as the Separation Anxiety Test and various Doll Play procedures and the simple application of existing adult instruments such as the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Unlike the AAI, the CAI focuses upon current memories (rather than retrospective accounts) and assesses children’s perceptions of their attachment figures’ current availability and sensitive responsiveness through eliciting internal representations of attachment figures. The CAI (Shmueli-Goetz et al, 2008; Target et al, 2003; Shmueli-Goetz et al, 2004) contains 19 questions asking children to recall and describe their attachment experiences with, and perception of their attachment figures, in particular, at times of hurt, emotional upset, illness, separation and loss. The interview contains developmentally appropriate scaffolding and relies upon non-verbal as well as verbal communication in the analysis of narratives. The coding is conducted from videotaped interviews and the coding and classification system yields attachment strategies analogous to those identified in infancy and adulthood.

Who is this course suitable for?

Child mental health professionals, researchers, social workers and teachers. Some experience of interviewing children would be an advantage, as would some familiarity with attachment theory, methods or research. However, nothing beyond interest in learning about the method is required.

Aims of course

To teach the rationale and technique of using the CAI as a tool for the assessment of child-parent attachment relationships in middle childhood (8-15 year olds) through videotaped interview. This includes the teaching of the manualised method of coding and reviewing various interviews, providing practice in the coding of the CAI.